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[fHER     DAMIEN 

RT   LOUIS   STEVENSON 

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Mary  Raymond  Shipman  Andrews 
The  Perfect  Tribute 
The  Lifted  Bandage 
The  Courage  of 

the  Commonplace 
The  Counsel  Assigned 

Maltbie  Davenport  Babcock 
The  Success  of  Defeat 

Katharine  Holland  Brown 
The  Messenger 

Richard  Harding  Davis 
The  Consul 
The  Boy  Scout 

Marion  Harland 

Looking  Westward 

Robert  Herrick 

The  Master  of  the  Inn 

Frederick  Landis 

The  Angel  of  Lonesome  Hill 

Francis  E.  Leupp 

A  Day  with  Father 

Alice  Duer  Miller 
Things 

Thomas  Nelson  Page 

The  Stranger's  Pew 

Robert  Louis  Stevenson 

A  Christma-s  Sermon 
Prayers  Written  at  Vailima 
^s  Triplex- 
Father  Damien 

Isobel  Strong 

Robert  Louis  Stevenson 

Henry  van  Dyke 

School  of  Life 

The  Spirit  of  Christmas 

The  Sad  Shepherd 

The  First  Christmas  Tree 


FATHER  DAMIEN 


Father  Damien 

An  Open  Letter  to  the  Reverend 
Dr.  Hyde  of  Honolulu 


By 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson 


With  a  Note,  Mrs.  Stevenson's  description  of 

the  writing,  and  related  passages  from 

Stevenson's  correspondence 


NEW  YORK 

Charles  Scribner's  Sons 
1916 


Copyright,  1916,  hy  Charles  Scribner's  Sons 


Published  March,  1916 


^^d   to  Lib. 
GIFT 


FATHER  DAMIEN 


047 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

AN  OPEN  LETTER  TO  THE 

REVEREND  DR.  HYDE 

OF  HONOLULU 

Sydney,  February  25,  1890. 
Sir, — It  may  probably  occur  to 
you  that  we  have  met,  and  visited, 
and  conversed;  on  my  side,  with 
interest.  You  may  remember  that 
you  have  done  me  several  courte- 
sies, for  which  I  was  prepared  to  be 
grateful.  But  there  are  duties  which 
come  before  gratitude,  and  offences 
which  justly  divide  friends,  far  more 
accjuaintances.  Your  letter  to  the 
Reverend  H.  B.  Gage  is  a  docu- 
ment, which,  in  my  sight,  if  you  had 

[3] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

filled  me  with  bread  when  I  was 
starving,  if  you  had  sat  up  to  nurse 
my  father  when  he  lay  a-dying, 
would  yet  absolve  me  from  the 
bonds  of  gratitude.  You  know  enough, 
doubtless,  of  the  process  of  canon- 
isation to  be  aware  that,  a  hundred 
years  after  the  death  of  Damien, 
there  will  appear  a  man  charged 
with  the  painful  office  of  the  deviVs 
advocate.  After  that  noble  brother  of 
mine,  and  of  all  frail  clay,  shall  have 
lain  a  century  at  rest,  one  shall  ac- 
cuse, one  defend  him.  The  circum- 
stance is  unusual  that  the  devil's 
advocate  should  be  a  volunteer, 
should  be  a  member  of  a  sect  im- 
mediately rival,  and  should  make 
haste  to  take  upon  himself  his  ugly 
office  ere  the  bones  are  cold;  unusual, 
and  of  a  taste  which  I  shall  leave  my 
[4] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

readers  free  to  qualify;  unusual,  and 
to  me  inspiring.  If  I  have  at  all 
learned  the  trade  of  using  words  to 
convey  truth  and  to  arouse  emotion, 
you  have  at  last  furnished  me  with  a 
subject.  For  it  is  in  the  interest  of 
all  mankind  and  the  cause  of  pub- 
lic decency  in  every  quarter  of  the 
world,  not  only  that  Damien  should 
be  righted,  but  that  you  and  your 
letter  should  be  displayed  at  length, 
in  their  true  colours,  to  the  public 
eye. 

To  do  this  properly,  I  must  begin 
by  quoting  you  at  large :  I  shall  then 
proceed  to  criticise  your  utterance 
from  several  points  of  view,  divine 
and  human,  in  the  course  of  which 
I  shall  attempt  to  draw  again  and 
with  more  specification  the  character 
of    the    dead    saint    whom    it    has 

[5] 


FATHER   DAMIEN 

pleased  you  to  vilify:  so  much  be- 
ing done,  I  shall  say  farewell  to  you 
for  ever. 

''Honolulu,  August  2,  1889. 
"Rev.  H.  B.  Gage. 

"Dear  Brother, — In  answer  to  your 
inquiries  about  Father  Damien,  I 
can  only  reply  that  we  who  knew 
the  man  are  surprised  at  the  extrav- 
agant newspaper  laudations,  as  if  he 
was  a  most  saintly  philanthropist. 
The  simple  truth  is,  he  was  a  coarse, 
dirty  man,  headstrong  and  bigoted. 
He  was  not  sent  to  Molokai,  but 
went  there  without  orders;  did  not 
stay  at  the  leper  settlement  (before 
he  became  one  himself),  but  circu- 
lated freely  over  the  whole  island 
(less  than  half  the  island  is  devoted 
to  the  lepers),  and  he  came  often  to 

[6] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

Honolulu.  He  had  no  hand  m  the 
reforms  and  improvements  inaug- 
urated, which  were  the  work  of  our 
Board  of  Health,  as  occasion  re- 
quired and  means  were  provided. 
He  was  not  a  pure  man  in  his  rela- 
tions with  women,  and  the  leprosy 
of  which  he  died  should  be  attributed 
to  his  vices  and  carelessness.  Others 
have  done  much  for  the  lepers,  our 
own  ministers,  the  government  phy- 
sicians, and  so  forth,  but  never  with 
the  Catholic  idea  of  meriting  eternal 
life. — Yours,  etc., 

"CM.  Hyde."  1 

To  deal  fitly  with  a  letter  so  extraor- 
dinary, I  must  draw  at  the  outset 
on  my  private  knowledge  of  the 
signatory  and  his  sect.  It  may  of- 
fend others;  scarcely  you,  who  have 

^  From  the  Sydney  Presbyterian,  October  26,  1889. 
[7] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

been  so  busy  to  collect,  so  bold  to 
publish,  gossip  on  your  rivals.  And 
this  is  perhaps  the  moment  when  I 
may  best  explain  to  you  the  char- 
acter of  what  you  are  to  read :  I  con- 
ceive you  as  a  man  quite  beyond 
and  below  the  reticences  of  civility: 
with  what  measure  you  mete,  with 
that  shall  it  be  measured  you  again; 
with  you,  at  last,  I  rejoice  to  feel 
the  button  off  the  foil  and  to  plunge 
home.  And  if  in  aught  that  I  shall 
say  I  should  offend  others,  your 
colleagues,  whom  I  respect  and  re- 
member with  affection,  I  can  but 
offer  them  my  regret;  I  am  not  free, 
I  am  inspired  by  the  consideration 
of  interests  far  more  large;  and  such 
pain  as  can  be  inflicted  by  anything 
from  me  must  be  indeed  trifling 
when  compared  with  the  pain  with 

[8] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

which  they  read  your  letter.  It  is 
not  the  hangman,  but  the  criminal, 
that  brings  dishonour  on  the  house. 
You  belong,  sir,  to  a  sect — I  be- 
lieve my  sect,  and  that  in  which  my 
ancestors  laboured — which  has  en- 
joyed, and  partly  failed  to  utilise, 
an  exceptional  advantage  in  the  is- 
lands of  Hawaii.  The  first  mission- 
aries came;  they  found  the  land 
already  self-purged  of  its  old  and 
bloody  faith;  they  were  embraced, 
almost  on  their  arrival,  with  en- 
thusiasm; what  troubles  they  sup- 
ported came  far  more  from  whites 
than  from  Hawaiians;  and  to  these 
last  they  stood  (in  a  rough  figure) 
in  the  shoes  of  God.  This  is  not  the 
place  to  enter  into  the  degree  or 
causes  of  their  failure,  such  as  it  is. 
One  element  alone  is  pertinent,  and 

[9] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

must  here  be  plainly  dealt  with.  In 
the  course  of  their  evangelical  call- 
ing, they — or  too  many  of  them — 
grew  rich.  It  may  be  news  to  you 
that  the  houses  of  missionaries  are  a 
cause  of  mocking  on  the  streets  of 
Honolulu.  It  will  at  least  be  news  to 
you,  that  when  I  returned  your  civil 
visit,  the  driver  of  my  cab  com- 
mented on  the  size,  the  taste,  and 
the  comfort  of  your  home.  It  would 
have  been  news  certainly  to  myself, 
had  any  one  told  me  that  afternoon 
that  I  should  live  to  drag  such 
matter  into  print.  But  you  see,  sir, 
how  you  degrade  better  men  to 
your  own  level;  and  it  is  needful 
that  those  who  are  to  judge  betwixt 
you  and  me,  betwixt  Damien  and 
the  devil's  advocate,  should  under- 
stand   your    letter    to    have    been 

[10] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

penned  in  a  house  which  could  raise, 
and  that  very  justly,  the  envy  and 
the  comments  of  the  passers-by.  I 
think  (to  employ  a  phrase  of  yours 
which  I  admire)  it  "should  be  at- 
tributed" to  you  that  you  have 
never  visited  the  scene  of  Damien's 
life  and  death.  If  you  had,  and  had 
recalled  it,  and  looked  about  your 
pleasant  rooms,  even  your  pen  per- 
haps would  have  been  stayed. 

Your  sect  (and  remember,  as  far 
as  any  sect  avow^s  me,  it  is  mine) 
has  not  done  ill  in  a  worldly  sense  in 
the  Hawaiian  Kingdom.  When  ca- 
lamity befell  their  innocent  parish- 
ioners, when  leprosy  descended  and 
took  root  in  the  Eight  Islands,  a 
quid  pro  quo  w^as  to  be  looked  for. 
To  that  prosperous  mission,  and  to 
you,  as  one  of  its  adornments,  God 
[11] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

had  sent  at  last  an  opportunity. 
I  know  I  am  touching  here  upon 
a  nerve  acutely  sensitive.  I  know 
that  others  of  your  colleagues  look 
back  on  the  inertia  of  your  Church, 
and  the  intrusive  and  decisive  hero- 
ism of  Damien,  with  something  al- 
most to  be  called  remorse.  I  am  sure 
it  is  so  with  yourself;  I  am  per- 
suaded your  letter  was  inspired  by 
a  certain  envy,  not  essentially  igno- 
ble, and  the  one  human  trait  to  be 
espied  in  that  performance.  You 
were  thinking  of  the  lost  chance, 
the  past  day;  of  that  which  should 
have  been  conceived  and  was  not; 
of  the  service  due  and  not  rendered. 
Time  was,  said  the  voice  in  your 
ear,  in  your  pleasant  room,  as  you 
sat  raging  and  writing;  and  if  the 
words    written    were    base    beyond 

[12] 


FATHER   DAMIEN 

parallel,  the  rage,  I  am  happy  to 
repeat — it  is  the  only  compliment  I 
shall  pay  you — the  rage  was  almost 
virtuous.  But,  sir,  when  we  have 
failed,  and  another  has  succeeded; 
when  we  have  stood  by,  and  an- 
other has  stepped  in;  when  we  sit 
and  grow  bulky  in  our  charming 
mansions,  and  a  plain,  uncouth  peas- 
ant steps  into  the  battle,  under  the 
eyes  of  God,  and  succours  the  af- 
flicted, and  consoles  the  dying,  and 
is  himself  afflicted  in  his  turn,  and 
dies  upon  the  field  of  honour — the 
battle  cannot  be  retrieved  as  your 
unhappy  irritation  has  suggested. 
It  is  a  lost  battle,  and  lost  for  ever. 
One  thing  remained  to  you  in  your 
defeat — some  rags  of  common  hon- 
our; and  these  you  have  made  haste 
to  cast  away. 

[13] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

Common  honour;  not  the  honour  of 
having  done  anything  right,  but  the 
honour  of  not  having  done  aught 
conspicuously  foul;  the  honour  of 
the  inert:  that  was  what  remained 
to  you.  We  are  not  all  expected  to  be 
Damiens;  a  man  may  conceive  his 
duty  more  narrowly,  he  may  love 
his  comforts  better;  and  none  will 
cast  a  stone  at  him  for  that.  But  will 
a  gentleman  of  your  reverend  pro- 
fession allow  me  an  example  from 
the  fields  of  gallantry.'^  When  two 
gentlemen  compete  for  the  favour  of 
a  lady,  and  the  one  succeeds  and 
the  other  is  rejected,  and  (as  will 
sometimes  happen)  matter  damag- 
ing to  the  successful  rival's  credit 
reaches  the  ear  of  the  defeated,  it  is 
held  by  plain  men  of  no  pretensions 
that  his   mouth   is,   in   the  circum- 

[14] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

stance,  almost  necessarily  closed. 
Your  Church  and  Damien's  were  in 
Hawaii  upon  a  rivalry  to  do  well:  to 
help,  to  edify,  to  set  divine  ex- 
amples. You  having  (in  one  huge  in- 
stance) failed,  and  Damien  succeed- 
ed, I  marvel  it  should  not  have  oc- 
curred to  you  that  you  were  doomed 
to  silence;  that  when  you  had 
been  outstripped  in  that  high  rival- 
ry, and  sat  inglorious  in  the  midst 
of  your  well-being,  in  your  pleas- 
ant room — and  Damien,  crowned 
with  glories  and  horrors,  toiled  and 
rotted  in  that  pigstye  of  his  under 
the  cliffs  of  Kalawao — you,  the  elect 
who  would  not,  were  the  last  man  on 
earth  to  collect  and  propagate  gossip 
on  the  volunteer  who  would  and  did. 
I  think  I  see  you — for  I  try  to  see 
you   in   the   flesh   as   I   write   these 

[15] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

sentences — I  think  I  see  you  leap  at 
the  word  pigstye,  a  hyperbohcal 
expression  at  the  best.  "He  had  no 
hand  in  the  reforms,"  he  was  "a 
coarse,  dirty  man";  these  were  your 
own  words;  and  you  may  think  it 
possible  that  I  am  come  to  support 
you  with  fresh  evidence.  In  a  sense, 
it  is  even  so.  Damien  has  been  too 
much  depicted  with  a  conventional 
halo  and  conventional  features;  so 
drawn  by  men  who  perhaps  had  not 
the  eye  to  remark  or  the  pen  to  ex- 
press the  individual;  or  who  per- 
haps were  only  blinded  and  silenced 
by  generous  admiration,  such  as  I 
partly  envy  for  myself — such  as 
you,  if  your  soul  were  enlightened, 
would  envy  on  your  bended  knees. 
It  is  the  least  defect  of  such  a  method 
of  portraiture  that  it  makes  the  path 

[16] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

easy  for  the  devil's  advocate,  and 
leaves  for  the  misuse  of  the  slanderer 
a  considerable  field  of  truth.  For 
the  truth  that  is  suppressed  by 
friends  is  the  readiest  weapon  of  the 
enemy.  The  world,  in  your  despite, 
may  perhaps  owe  you  something,  if 
your  letter  be  the  means  of  substitut- 
ing once  for  all  a  credible  likeness 
for  a  wax  abstraction.  For,  if  that 
world  at  all  remember  you,  on  the 
day  when  Damien  of  Molokai  shall 
be  named  Saint,  it  will  be  in  virtue 
of  one  work:  your  letter  to  the 
Reverend  H.  B.  Gage. 

You  may  ask  on  what  authority  I 
speak.  It  was  my  inclement  destiny 
to  become  acquainted,  not  with 
Damien,  but  with  Dr.  Hyde.  When 
I  visited  the  lazaretto  Damien  was 
already    in    his    resting   grave.    But 

[17] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

such  information  as  I  have,  I  gath- 
ered on  the  spot  in  conversation 
with  those  who  knew  him  well  and 
long:  some  indeed  who  revered  his 
memory ;  but  others  who  had  sparred 
and  wrangled  with  him,  who  be- 
held him  with  no  halo,  who  per- 
haps regarded  him  with  small  re- 
spect, and  through  whose  unprepared 
and  scarcely  partial  communications 
the  plain,  human  features  of  the 
man  shone  on  me  convincingly. 
These  gave  me  what  knowledge  I 
possess ;  and  I  learned  it  in  that  scene 
where  it  could  be  most  completely 
and  sensitively  understood — Kala- 
wao, which  you  have  never  visited, 
about  which  you  have  never  so 
much  as  endeavoured  to  inform 
yourself:  for,  brief  as  your  letter  is, 
you  have  found  the  means  to  stum- 

[18  1 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

ble  into  that  confession.  ''Less  than 
one-half  of  the  island,"  you  say,  "is 
devoted  to  the  lepers."  Molokai — 
" Molokai  ahinaj'  the  "grey,"  lofty, 
and  most  desolate  island — along  all 
its  northern  side  plunges  a  front  of 
precipice  into  a  sea  of  unusual  pro- 
fundity. This  range  of  cliff  is,  from 
east  to  west,  the  true  end  and  frontier 
of  the  island.  Only  in  one  spot  there 
projects  into  the  ocean  a  certain 
triangular  and  rugged  down,  grassy, 
stony,  windy,  and  rising  in  the 
midst  into  a  hill  with  a  dead  crater: 
the  whole  bearing  to  the  cliff  that 
overhangs  it  somewhat  the  same  re- 
lation as  a  bracket  to  a  wall.  With 
this  hint  you  will  now  be  able  to 
pick  out  the  leper  station  on  a  map; 
you  will  be  able  to  judge  how  much 
of  Molokai  is  thus  cut  off  between 

[19] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

the  surf  and  precipice,  whether  less 
than  a  half,  or  less  than  a  quarter, 
or  a  fifth,  or  a  tenth — or  say,  a 
twentieth;  and  the  next  time  you 
burst  into  print  you  will  be  in  a  posi- 
tion to  share  with  us  the  issue  of 
your  calculations. 

I  imagine  you  to  be  one  of  those 
persons  who  talk  with  cheerful- 
ness of  that  place  which  oxen  and 
wainropes  could  not  drag  you  to  be- 
hold. You,  who  do  not  even  know 
its  situation  on  the  map,  probably 
denounce  sensational  descriptions, 
stretching  your  limbs  the  while  in 
your  pleasant  parlour  on  Beretania 
Street.  When  I  was  pulled  ashore 
there  one  early  morning,  there  sat 
with  me  in  the  boat  two  sisters, 
bidding  farewell  (in  humble  imita- 
tion of  Damien)   to  the  lights  and 

[20  1 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

joys  of  human  life.  One  of  these 
wept  silently;  I  could  not  withhold 
myself  from  joining  her.  Had  you 
been  there,  it  is  my  belief  that  na- 
ture would  have  triumphed  even  in 
you;  and  as  the  boat  drew  but  a 
little  nearer,  and  you  beheld  the 
stairs  crowded  with  abominable  def- 
ormations of  our  common  manhood, 
and  saw  yourself  landing  in  the 
midst  of  such  a  population  as  only 
now  and  then  surrounds  us  in  the 
horror  of  a  nightmare — what  a  hag- 
gard eye  you  would  have  rolled  over 
your  reluctant  shoulder  towards  the 
house  on  Beretania  Street !  Had 
you  gone  on;  had  you  found  every 
fourth  face  a  blot  upon  the  land- 
scape; had  you  visited  the  hospital 
and   seen   the   butt-ends   of   human 

beings  lying  there  almost  unrecog- 
[211 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

nisable,  but  still  breathing,  still 
thinking,  still  remembering;  you 
would  have  understood  that  life  in 
the  lazaretto  is  an  ordeal  from  which 
the  nerves  of  a  man's  spirit  shrink, 
even  as  his  eye  quails  under  the 
brightness  of  the  sun;  you  would 
have  felt  it  was  (even  to-day)  a 
pitiful  place  to  visit  and  a  hell  to 
dwell  in.  It  is  not  the  fear  of  possible 
infection.  That  seems  a  little  thing 
when  compared  with  the  pain,  the 
pity  and  the  disgust  of  the  visitor's 
surroundings,  and  the  atmosphere  of 
affliction,  disease,  and  physical  dis- 
grace in  which  he  breathes.  I  do  not 
think  I  am  a  man  more  than  usually 
timid;  but  I  never  recall  the  days 
and  nights  I  spent  upon  that  island 
promontory  (eight  days  and  seven 
nights),  without  heartfelt  thankful- 

[22] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

ness  that  I  am  somewhere  else.  I 
find  in  my  diary  that  I  speak  of  my 
stay  as  a  "grinding  experience":  I 
have  once  jotted  in  the  margin, 
"Harrowing  is  the  word";  and  when 
the  Mokolii  bore  me  at  last  towards 
the  outer  world,  I  kept  repeating  to 
myself,  with  a  new  conception  of 
their  pregnancy,  those  simple  words 
of  the  song — 

"  'Tis  the  most  distressful  country  that  ever 
yet  was  seen." 

And  observe:  that  which  I  saw 
and  suffered  from  was  a  settlement 
purged,  bettered,  beautified;  the  new 
village  built,  the  hospital  and  the 
Bishop-Home  excellently  arranged ; 
the  sisters,  the  doctor,  and  the  mis- 
sionaries, all  indefatigable  in  their 
noble  tasks.  It  was  a  different  place 

[23] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

when  Damien  came  there,  and  made 
his  great  renunciation,  and  slept 
that  first  night  under  a  tree  amidst 
his  rotting  brethren:  alone  with  pes- 
tilence; and  looking  forward  (with 
what  courage,  with  what  pitiful  sink- 
ings of  dread,  God  only  knows)  to  a 
lifetime  of  dressing  sores  and  stumps. 
You  will  say,  perhaps,  I  am  too 
sensitive,  that  sights  as  painful 
abound  in  cancer  hospitals  and  are 
confronted  daily  by  doctors  and 
nurses.  I  have  long  learned  to  ad- 
mire and  envy  the  doctors  and  the 
nurses.  But  there  is  no  cancer  hos- 
pital so  large  and  populous  as  Kala- 
wao and  Kalaupapa;  and  in  such  a 
matter  every  fresh  case,  like  every 
inch  of  length  in  the  pipe  of  an  or- 
gan, deepens  the  note  of  the  impres- 
sion; for  what  daunts  the  onlooker  is 

[24] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

that  monstrous  sum  of  human  suffer- 
ing by  which  he  stands  surrounded. 
Lastly,  no  doctor  or  nurse  is  called 
upon  to  enter  once  for  all  the  doors 
of  that  gehenna;  they  do  not  say 
farewell,  they  need  not  abandon 
hope,  on  its  sad  threshold;  they  but 
go  for  a  time  to  their  high  calling, 
and  can  look  forward  as  they  go  to 
relief,  to  recreation,  and  to  rest. 
But  Damien  shut  to  with  his  own 
hand  the  doors  of  his  own  sepulchre. 

I  shall  now  extract  three  passages 
from  my  diary  at  Kalawao. 

A,  ''Damien  is  dead  and  already 
somewhat  ungratefully  remembered 
in  the  field  of  his  labours  and  suf- 
ferings. 'He  was  a  good  man,  but 
very  officious,'  says  one.  Another 
tells  me  he  had  fallen  (as  other 
priests  so  easily  do)  into  something 

[25] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

of  the  ways  and  habits  of  thought  of 
a  Kanaka;  but  he  had  the  wit  to 
recognise  the  fact,  and  the  good 
sense  to  laugh  at"  [over]  "it.  A  plain 
man  it  seems  he  was;  I  cannot  find 
he  was  a  popular." 

B.  "After  Ragsdale's  death"  [Rags- 
dale  was  a  famous  Luna,  or  overseer, 
of  the  unruly  settlement]  "there  fol- 
lowed a  brief  term  of  office  by  Father 
Damien  which  served  only  to  pub- 
lish the  weakness  of  that  noble 
man.  He  was  rough  in  his  ways,  and 
he  had  no  control.  x\uthority  was 
relaxed;  Damien's  life  was  threat- 
ened, and  he  was  soon  eager  to  re- 
sign." 

C.  "Of  Damien  I  begin  to  have  an 
idea.  He  seems  to  have  been  a  man 
of  the  peasant  class,  certainly  of  the 
peasant  type:  shrewd;  ignorant  and 

[26] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

bigoted,  yet  with  an  open  mind,  and 
capable  of  receiving  and  digesting  a 
reproof  if  it  were  bluntly  admin- 
istered; superbly  generous  in  the 
least  thing  as  well  as  in  the  greatest, 
and  as  ready  to  give  his  last  shirt 
(although  not  without  human  grum- 
bling) as  he  had  been  to  sacrifice  his 
life;  essentially  indiscreet  and  offi- 
cious, which  made  him  a  trouble- 
some colleague;  domineering  in  all 
his  ways,  which  made  him  incurably 
unpopular  with  the  Kanakas,  but 
yet  destitute  of  real  authority,  so 
that  his  boys  laughed  at  him  and 
he  must  carry  out  his  wishes  by  the 
means  of  bribes.  He  learned  to  have 
a  mania  for  doctoring;  and  set  up 
the  Kanakas  against  the  remedies  of 
his  regular  rivals:  perhaps  (if  any- 
thing matter  at  all  in  the  treatment 

[27] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

of  such  a  disease)  the  worst  thing 
that  he  did,  and  certainly  the  easiest. 
The  best  and  worst  of  the  man  ap- 
pear very  plainly  in  his  dealings 
with  Mr.  Chapman's  money;  he  had 
originally  laid  it  out"  [intended  to 
lay  it  out]  ''entirely  for  the  benefit 
of  Catholics,  and  even  so  not  wisely, 
but  after  a  long,  plain  talk,  he  ad- 
mitted his  error  fully  and  revised  the 
list.  The  sad  state  of  the  boys'  home 
is  in  part  the  result  of  his  lack  of 
control;  in  part,  of  his  own  slovenly 
ways  and  false  ideas  of  hygiene. 
Brother  officials  used  to  call  it  'Da- 
mien's  Chinatown.'  'Well,'  they 
would  say,  'your  Chinatown  keeps 
growing.'  And  he  would  laugh  with 
perfect  good-nature,  and  adhere  to 
his  errors  with  perfect  obstinacy.  So 
much  I  have  gathered  of  truth  about 

[28] 


FATHER   DAMIEN 

this  plain,  noble  human  brother  and 
father  of  ours;  his  imperfections  are 
the  traits  of  his  face,  by  which  we 
know  him  for  our  fellow;  his  martyr- 
dom and  his  example  nothing  can 
lessen  or  annul;  and  only  a  person 
here  on  the  spot  can  properly  ap- 
preciate their  greatness." 

I  have  set  down  these  private  pas- 
sages, as  you  perceive,  without  cor- 
rection; thanks  to  you,  the  public 
has  them  in  their  bluntness.  They 
are  almost  a  list  of  the  man's  faults, 
for  it  is  rather  these  that  I  was  seek- 
ing: with  his  virtues,  with  the  heroic 
profile  of  his  life,  I  and  the  world 
were  already  sufficiently  acquainted. 
I  was  besides  a  little  suspicious  of 
Catholic  testimony;  in  no  ill  sense, 
but  merely  because  Damien's  ad- 
mirers and  disciples  were  the  least 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

likely  to  be  critical.  I  know  you  will 
be  more  suspicious  still;  and  the 
facts  set  down  above  were  one  and 
all  collected  from  the  lips  of  Protes- 
tants who  had  opposed  the  father  in 
his  life.  Yet  I  am  strangely  deceived, 
or  they  build  up  the  image  of  a 
man,  with  all  his  weaknesses,  essen- 
tially heroic,  and  alive  with  rugged 
honesty,  generosity,  and  mirth. 

Take  it  for  what  it  is,  rough  pri- 
vate jottings  of  the  worst  sides  of 
Damien's  character,  collected  from 
the  lips  of  those  who  had  laboured 
with  and  (in  your  own  phrase) 
"knew  the  man"; — though  I  ques- 
tion whether  Damien  would  have 
said  that  he  knew  you.  Take  it,  and 
observe  with  wonder  how  well  you 
were  served  by  your  gossips,  how  ill 
by  your  intelligence  and  sympathy; 

[30] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

in  how  many  points  of  fact  we  are 
at  one,  and  how  widely  our  appre- 
ciations vary.  There  is  something 
wrong  here;  either  with  you  or  me. 
It  is  possible,  for  instance,  that  you, 
who  seem  to  have  so  many  ears  in 
Kalawao,  had  heard  of  the  affair 
of  Mr.  Chapman's  money,  and  were 
singly  struck  by  Damien's  intended 
wrong-doing.  I  was  struck  with  that 
also,  and  set  it  fairly  down;  but  I 
was  struck  much  more  by  the  fact 
that  he  had  the  honesty  of  mind  to 
be  convinced.  I  may  here  tell  you 
that  it  was  a  long  business;  that  one 
of  his  colleagues  sat  with  him  late 
into  the  night,  multiplying  argu- 
ments and  accusations;  that  the 
father  listened  as  usual  with  "per- 
fect good-nature  and  perfect  ob- 
stinacy"; but  at  the  last,  when  he 

[31] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

was  persuaded — "Yes,"  said  he,  **I 
am  very  much  obhged  to  you;  you 
have  done  me  a  service;  it  would 
have  been  a  theft."  There  are  many 
(not  Cathohcs  merely)  who  require 
their  heroes  and  saints  to  be  infal- 
lible; to  these  the  story  will  be  pain- 
ful; not  to  the  true  lovers,  patrons, 
and  servants  of  mankind. 

And  I  take  it,  this  is  a  type  of  our 
division;  that  you  are  one  of  those 
who  have  an  eye  for  faults  and  fail- 
ures; that  you  take  a  pleasure  to 
find  and  publish  them;  and  that, 
having  found  them,  you  make  haste 
to  forget  the  overvailing  virtues  and 
the  real  success  which  had  alone  in- 
troduced them  to  your  knowledge. 
It  is  a  dangerous  frame  of  mind. 
That  you  may  understand  how  dan- 
gerous, and  into  what  a  situation  it 

[32] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

has  already  brought  you,  we  will 
(if  you  please)  go  hand-in-hand 
through  the  different  phrases  of  your 
letter,  and  candidly  examine  each 
from  the  point  of  view  of  its  truth, 
its  appositeness,  and  its  charity. 

Damien  was  coarse. 

It  is  very  possible.  You  make  us 
sorry  for  the  lepers  who  had  only  a 
coarse  old  peasant  for  their  friend 
and  father.  But  you,  who  were  so 
refined,  why  were  you  not  there,  to 
cheer  them  with  the  lights  of  cul- 
ture.^ Or  may  I  remind  you  that  w^e 
have  some  reason  to  doubt  if  John 
the  Baptist  were  genteel;  and  in 
the  case  of  Peter,  on  whose  career 
you  doubtless  dwell  approvingly  in 
the  pulpit,  no  doubt  at  all  he  was 
a   *' coarse,  headstrong"   fisherman! 

[33] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

Yet  even  in  our  Protestant  Bibles 
Peter  is  called  Saint. 

Damien  was  dirty. 

He  was.  Think  of  the  poor  lepers 
annoyed  with  this  dirty  comrade ! 
But  the  clean  Dr.  Hyde  was  at  his 
food  in  a  fine  house. 

Damien  was  headstrong, 

I  believe  you  are  right  again;  and  I 
thank  God  for  his  strong  head  and 
heart. 

Damien  was  bigoted. 

I  am  not  fond  of  bigots  myself,  be- 
cause they  are  not  fond  of  me.  But 
what  is  meant  by  bigotry,  that  we 
should  regard  it  as  a  blemish  in  a 
priest  .f^  Damien  believed  his  own  re- 
ligion with  the  simplicity  of  a  peas- 

[34] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

ant  or  a  child;  as  I  would  I  could 
suppose  that  you  do.  For  this,  I 
wonder  at  him  some  way  off;  and 
had  that  been  his  only  character, 
should  have  avoided  him  in  life. 
But  the  point  of  interest  in  Damien, 
which  has  caused  him  to  be  so  much 
talked  about  and  made  him  at  last 
the  subject  of  your  pen  and  mine, 
was  that,  in  him,  his  bigotry,  his 
intense  and  narrow  faith,  wrought 
potently  for  good,  and  strengthened 
him  to  be  one  of  the  world's  heroes 
and  exemplars. 

Damien  was  not  sent  to  Molokaiy  hut 
went  there  without  orders. 

Is  this  a  misreading?  or  do  you 
really  mean  the  words  for  blame  .^  I 
have  heard  Christ,  in  the  pulpits  of 
our  Church,  held  up  for  imitation  on 

[35] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

the  ground  that  His  sacrifice  was 
voluntary.  Does  Dr.  Hyde  think 
otherwise  .^ 

Damien  did  not  stay  at  the  settle- 
ment, etc. 

It  is  true  he  was  allowed  many  in- 
dulgences. Am  I  to  understand  that 
you  blame  the  father  for  profiting  by 
these,  or  the  officers  for  granting 
them  '^  In  either  case,  it  is  a  mighty 
Spartan  standard  to  issue  from  the 
house  on  Beretania  Street;  and  I  am 
convinced  you  will  find  yourself 
with  few  supporters. 

Damien  had  no  hand  in  the  reforms, 
etc, 

I  think  even  you  will  admit  that  I 
have  already  been  frank  in  my  de- 
scription of  the  man  I  am  defending; 

[36] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

but  before  I  take  you  up  upon  this 
head,  I  will  be  franker  still,  and  tell 
you  that  perhaps  nowhere  in  the 
world  can  a  man  taste  a  more  pleas- 
urable sense  of  contrast  than  when 
he  passes  from  Damien's  '*  China- 
town" at  Kalawao  to  the  beautiful 
Bishop-Home  at  Kalaupapa.  At  this 
point,  in  my  desire  to  make  all  fair 
for  you,  I  will  break  my  rule  and 
adduce  Catholic  testimony.  Here  is 
a  passage  from  my  diary  about  my 
visit  to  the  Chinatown,  from  which 
you  will  see  how  it  is  (even  now) 
regarded  by  its  own  officials:  ''We 
went  round  all  the  dormitories,  refec- 
tories, etc. — dark  and  dingy  enough, 
with  a  superficial  cleanliness,  which 
he"  [Mr.  Dutton,  the  lay  brother] 
"did  not  seek  to  defend.  'It  is 
almost  decent,'  said  he;  'the  sisters 

[37] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

will  make  that  all  right  when  we 
get  them  here.'  "  And  yet  I  gath- 
ered it  was  already  better  since 
Damien  was  dead,  and  far  better 
than  when  he  was  there  alone  and 
had  his  own  (not  alwa^^s  excellent) 
way.  I  have  now  come  far  enough  to 
meet  you  on  a  common  ground  of 
fact;  and  I  tell  you  that,  to  a  mind 
not  prejudiced  by  jealousy,  all  the 
reforms  of  the  lazaretto,  and  even 
those  which  he  most  vigorously  op- 
posed, are  properly  the  work  of  Da- 
mien.  They  are  the  evidence  of  his 
success;  they  are  what  his  heroism 
provoked  from  the  reluctant  and  the 
careless.  Many  were  before  him  in 
the  field;  Mr.  Meyer,  for  instance, 
of  whose  faithful  work  we  hear  too 
little:  there  have  been  many  since; 
and  some  had  more  worldly  wisdom, 

[38] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

though  none  had  more  devotion, 
than  our  saint.  Before  his  day,  even 
you  will  confess,  they  had  effected 
little.  It  was  his  part,  by  one  strik- 
ing act  of  martyrdom,  to  direct  all 
men's  eyes  on  that  distressful  coun- 
try. At  a  blow,  and  with  the  price  of 
his  life,  he  made  the  place  illustrious 
and  public.  And  that,  if  you  will 
consider  largely,  was  the  one  re- 
form needful;  pregnant  of  all  that 
should  succeed.  It  brought  money; 
it  brought  (best  individual  addition 
of  them  all)  the  sisters;  it  brought 
supervision,  for  public  opinion  and 
public  interest  landed  with  the  man 
at  Kalawao.  If  ever  any  man  brought 
reforms,  and  died  to  bring  them,  it 
was  he.  There  is  not  a  clean  cup  or 
towel  in  the  Bishop-Home,  but  dirty 
Damien  washed  it. 

[39] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

Damien  was  not  a  pure  man  in  his 
relations  with  women,  etc. 

How  do  you  know  that?  Is  this 
the  nature  of  the  conversation  in 
that  house  on  Beretania  Street  which 
the  cabman  envied,  driving  past? — 
racy  details  of  the  misconduct  of  the 
poor  peasant  priest,  toihng  under 
the  cHffs  of  Molokai  ? 

Many  have  visited  the  station  be- 
fore me;  they  seem  not  to  have 
heard  the  rumour.  When  I  was 
there  I  heard  many  shocking  tales, 
for  my  informants  were  men  speak- 
ing with  the  plainness  of  the  laity; 
and  I  heard  plenty  of  complaints  of 
Damien.  Why  was  this  never  men- 
tioned? and  how  came  it  to  you  in 
the  retirement  of  your  clerical  par- 
lour ? 

But  I  must  not  even  seem  to  de- 

[40] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

ceive  you.  This  scandal,  when  I 
read  it  in  your  letter,  was  not  new 
to  me.  I  had  heard  it  once  before; 
and  I  must  tell  you  how.  There  came 
to  Samoa  a  man  from  Honolulu;  he, 
in  a  public-house  on  the  beach, 
volunteered  the  statement  that  Da- 
mien  had  "contracted  the  disease 
from  having  connection  with  the 
female  lepers";  and  I  find  a  joy  in 
telling  you  how  the  report  was  wel- 
comed in  a  public-house.  A  man 
sprang  to  his  feet ;  I  am  not  at  liberty 
to  give  his  name,  but  from  what  I 
heard  I  doubt  if  you  would  care  to 
have    him    to    dinner    in    Beretania 

Street.  ''You  miserable  little  " 

(here  is  a  word  I  dare  not  print,  it 
would   so   shock   your   ears).    "You 

miserable  little  ,"  he  cried,  "if 

the    story    were    a    thousand    times 

[411 


FATHER  DAIVOEN 

true,  can't  you  see  you  are  a  million 
times  a  lower for  daring  to  re- 
peat it?"  I  wish  it  could  be  told  of 
you  that  when  the  report  reached 
you  in  your  house,  perhaps  after 
family  worship,  you  had  found  in 
your  soul  enough  holy  anger  to  re- 
ceive it  with  the  same  expressions: 
ay,  even  with  that  one  which  I  dare 
not  print;  it  would  not  need  to  have 
been  blotted  away,  like  Uncle  Toby's 
oath,  by  the  tears  of  the  recording 
angel;  it  would  have  been  counted  to 
you  for  your  brightest  righteousness. 
But  you  have  deliberately  chosen 
the  part  of  the  man  from  Honolulu, 
and  you  have  played  it  with  im- 
provements of  your  own.  The  man 
from  Honolulu — miserable,  leering 
creature — communicated  the  tale  to 
a  rude  knot  of  beacli  -combing  drink- 

[42] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

ers  in  a  public-house,  where  (I  will 
so  far  agree  with  your  temperance 
opinions)  man  is  not  always  at  his 
noblest;  and  the  man  from  Honolulu 
had  himself  been  drinking — drink- 
ing, we  may  charitably  fancy,  to 
excess.  It  was  to  your  "Dear  Brother, 
the  Reverend  H.  B.  Gage,"  that  you 
chose  to  communicate  the  sickening 
story;  and  the  blue  ribbon  which 
adorns  your  portly  bosom  forbids 
me  to  allow  you  the  extenuating 
plea  that  you  were  drunk  when  it 
was  done.  Your  "dear  brother" — a 
brother  indeed — made  haste  to  de- 
liver up  your  letter  (as  a  means  of 
grace,  perhaps)  to  the  religious 
papers;  where,  after  many  months, 
I  found  and  read  and  wondered  at  it ; 
and  whence  I  have  now  reproduced 
it  for  t^^  wonder  of  others.  And  you 

[43] 


FATHER  DAI^HEN 

and  your  dear  brother  have,  by  this 
cycle  of  operations,  built  up  a  con- 
trast very  edifying  to  examine  in 
detail.  The  man  whom  you  would 
not  care  to  have  to  dinner,  on  the 
one  side;  on  the  other,  the  Rever- 
end Dr.  Hyde  and  the  Reverend  H. 
B.  Gage:  the  Apia  bar-room,  the 
Honolulu  manse. 

But  I  fear  you  scarce  appreciate 
how  you  appear  to  your  fellow-men; 
and  to  bring  it  home  to  you,  I  will 
suppose  your  story  to  be  true.  I  will 
suppose — and  God  forgive  me  for 
supposing  it — that  Damien  faltered 
and  stumbled  in  his  narrow  path  of 
duty;  I  will  suppose  that,  in  the 
horror  of  his  isolation,  perhaps  in 
the  fever  of  incipient  disease,  he, 
who  was  doing  so  much  more  than 
he  had  sworn,  failed  in  the  letter  of 

[44] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

his  priestly  oath — he,  who  was  so 
much  a  better  man  than  either  you 
or  me,  who  did  what  we  have  never 
dreamed  of  daring — he  too  tasted  of 
our  common  frailty.  *'0,  lago,  the 
pity  of  it !"  The  least  tender  should 
be  moved  to  tears;  the  most  in- 
credulous to  prayer.  And  all  that  you 
could  do  was  to  pen  your  letter  to 
the  Reverend  H.  B.  Gage ! 

Is  it  growing  at  all  clear  to  you 
what  a  picture  you  have  drawn  of 
your  own  heart  .^^  I  will  try  yet  once 
again  to  make  it  clearer.  You  had  a 
father:  suppose  this  tale  were  about 
him,  and  some  informant  brought 
it  to  you,  proof  in  hand:  I  am  not 
making  too  high  an  estimate  of  your 
emotional  nature  when  I  suppose 
you  would  regret  the  circumstance? 
that  you  would  feel  the  tale  of  frailty 

[45] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

the  more  keenly  since  it  shamed  the 

author  of  your  days?  and  that  the 

last  thing  you  would  do  would  be  to 

publish    it    in    the    religious    press? 

Well,  the  man  who  tried  to  do  what 

Damien  did,  is  my  father,  and  the 

father  of  the  man  in  the  iVpia  bar, 

and  the  father  of  all  who  love 

goodness;  and  he  was  your 

father  too,  if  God  had 

given  you  grace 

to  see  it. 


46 


NOTE 

The  circumstances  under  which  the 
Damien  letter  to  the  Reverend  Mr. 
Hyde  was  written  are  in  great  part 
famihar  to  the  readers  of  Steven- 
son's biography  and  of  his  corre- 
spondence; but  they  may  be  briefly 
recalled. 

After  their  first  Pacific  cruise  in  the 
yacht  Casco,  in  1888-89,  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Stevenson  were  for  several  months 
in  the  Hawaiian  Islands,  and  at  the 
end  of  May,  1889,  Stevenson  carried 
out  a  wish  that  he  had  formed  long 
before  and  that  had  grown  upon  him 
with  characteristic  intensity  as  he 
heard  more  of  the  subject,  to  visit 
the  leper  colony   on  the    Island   of 

[47] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

Molokai.  Father  Damien  had  died 
a  Httle  more  than  a  month  before 
(April  15),  so  that  Stevenson  never 
met  the  man  whose  work  had  in- 
terested him  so  keenly. 

Of  the  visit  at  Molokai  he  wrote  as 
follows  to  Sidney  Colvin,  showing, 
in  a  passage  afterward  closely  par- 
alleled in  the  Hyde  letter,  that  how- 
ever strong  his  feeling  about  Damien 
it  was  by  no  means  founded  upon 
any  blind  idealisation: 

I  have  seen  sights  that  cannot  be  told,  and 
heard  stories  that  cannot  be  repeated:  yet 
I  never  admired  my  poor  race  so  much,  nor 
(strange  as  it  may  seem)  loved  hfe  more 
than  in  the  settlement.  A  horror  of  moral 
beauty  broods  over  the  place:  that's  like 
bad  Victor  Hugo,  but  it  is  the  only  way  I 
can  express  the  sense  that  lived  with  me  all 
these  days.  And  this  even  though  it  was  in 
great  part  Catholic,  and  my  sympathies 
flew  never  with  so  much  difficulty  as  to- 
[48  1 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

wards  Catholic  virtues.  The  passbook  kept 
with  heaven  stirs  me  to  anger  and  laughter. 
One  of  the  sisters  calls  the  place  "the  ticket 
office  to  heaven."  Well,  what  is  the  odds.^* 
They  do  their  darg,  and  do  it  with  kind- 
ness and  efficiency  incredible;  and  we  must 
take  folks'  virtues  as  we  find  them,  and 
love  the  better  part.  Of  old  Damien,  whose 
weaknesses  and  worse  perhaps  I  heard 
fully,  I  think  only  the  more.  It  was  a  Eu- 
ropean peasant:  dirty,  bigoted,  untruth- 
ful, unwise,  tricky,  but  superb  with  gener- 
osity, residual  candour,  and  fundamental 
good-humour:  convince  him  he  had  done 
wrong  (it  might  take  hours  of  insult)  and  he 
would  undo  what  he  had  done  and  like  his 
corrector  better.  A  man,  with  all  the  grime 
and  paltriness  of  mankind,  but  a  saint  and 
hero  all  the  more  for  that.  The  place  as  re- 
gards scenery  is  grand,  gloomy,  and  bleak. 
Mighty  mountain  walls  descending  sheer 
along  the  whole  face  of  the  island  into  a  sea 
unusually  deep;  the  front  of  the  mountain 
ivied  and  furred  with  clinging  forest,  one 
viridescent  cliff :  about  half-way  from  east  to 
west,  the  low,  bare,  stony  promontory 
edged  in  between  the  cliff  and  the  ocean; 
the  two  little  towns  (Kalawao  and  Kalau- 
[49] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

papa)  seated  on  either  side  of  it,  as  bare  al- 
most as  bathing  machines  upon  a  beach ;  and 
the  population — gorgons  and  chima?ras  dire. 

Letters  to  his  wife  and  to  James 
Payn  give  further  details. 

At  the  end  of  June  the  Stevensons 
left  Honolulu  for  a  new  cruise  in 
the  trading  schooner  Equator — that 
which  ended  in  Apia,  Samoa,  and  re- 
sulted in  their  resolve  to  make  their 
home  there.  In  February,  1890,  they 
went  to  Sydney,  Australia,  intending 
to  go  on  to  England  and  return  to 
Samoa  later  in  the  year ;  a  plan  which 
was  abandoned,  as  will  be  remem- 
bered, because  of  Stevenson's  return- 
ing illness. 

In  Apia  Stevenson  had  read  a  report 
that  because  of  a  letter  from  a  mis- 
sionary in  Honolulu  a  plan  to  erect 
a  monument  to  Father  Damien  had 

[50] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

been  given  up;  and  in  Sydney  he 
saw  in  a  newspaper  Dr.  Hyde's  let- 
ter itself.  Mrs.  Stevenson  says: 

The  very  journal  containing  the  letter 
condemnatory  of  Father  Damien  was  among 
the  first  we  chanced  to  open.  I  shall  never 
forget  my  husband's  ferocity  of  indignation, 
his  leaping  stride  as  he  paced  the  room 
holding  the  offending  paper  at  arm's-length 
before  his  eyes  that  burned  and  sparkled 
with  a  peculiar  flashing  light.  His  cousin, 
Mr.  Balfour,  in  his  "Life  of  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson"  says:  "His  eyes  .  .  .  when  he 
was  moved  to  anger  or  any  fierce  emotion 
seemed  literally  to  blaze  and  glow  with  a 
burning  light."  In  another  moment  he  dis- 
appeared through  the  doorway,  and  I  could 
hear  him,  in  his  own  room,  pulling  his  chair 
to  the  table,  and  the  sound  of  his  inkstand 
being  dragged  towards  him. 

That  afternoon  he  called  us  together,  my 
son,  my  daughter,  and  myself,  saying  that 
he  had  something  serious  to  lay  before  us. 
He  went  over  the  circumstances  succinctly, 
and  then  we  three  had  the  incomparable  ex- 
perience of  hearing  its  author  read  aloud 
[51] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

the  defence  of  Father  Damien  while  it  was 
still  red-hot  from  his  indignant  soul. 
As  we  sat,  dazed  and  overcome  by  emo- 
tion, he  pointed  out  to  us  that  the  subject- 
matter  was  libellous  in  the  highest  degree, 
and  the  publication  of  the  article  might  cause 
the  loss  of  his  entire  substance.  Without 
our  concurrence  he  would  not  take  such  a 
risk.  There  was  no  dissenting  voice;  how 
could  there  be?  The  paper  was  published 
with  almost  no  change  or  revision,  though 
afterwards  my  husband  said  he  considered 
this  a  mistake.  He  thought  he  should  have 
waited  for  his  anger  to  cool  when  he  might 
have  been  more  impersonal  and  less  egotistic. 

He  wrote  to  his  mother: 

I  have  struck  as  hard  as  I  knew  how;  nor 
do  I  think  my  answer  can  fail  to  do  away 
(in  the  minds  of  all  who  see  it)  with  the  ef- 
fect of  Hyde's  incredible  and  really  villain- 
ous production.  What  a  mercy  I  wasn't 
this  man's  guest  in  the  Morning  Star!  I  think 
it  would  have  broke  my  heart. 

Later,  however,  he  returned  to  the 
feeling    of    which    Mrs.    Stevenson 

[52] 


FATHER  DAMIEN 

speaks  in  the  passage  just  quoted, 
for  in  September,  1890,  he  wrote  to 
Mrs.  Charles  Fairchild: 

It  is  always  harshness  that  one  regrets. 
...  I  regret  also  my  letter  to  Dr.  Hyde. 
Yes,  I  do;  I  think  it  was  barbarously  harsh; 
if  I  did  it  now,  I  would  defend  Damien  no 
less  well,  and  give  less  pain  to  those  who  are 
alive.  These  promptings  of  good-humour 
are  not  all  sound;  the  three  times  three, 
cheer  boys,  cheer,  and  general  amiability 
business  rests  on  a  sneaking  love  of  popu- 
larity, the  most  insidious  enemy  of  virtue. 
On  the  whole,  it  was  virtuous  to  defend 
Damien;  but  it  was  harsh  to  strike  so  hard 
at  Dr.  Hyde.  When  I  wrote  the  letter,  I  be- 
lieved he  would  bring  an  action,  in  which 
case  I  knew  I  could  be  beggared.  And  as 
yet  there  has  come  no  action;  the  injured 
Doctor  has  contented  himself  up  to  now 
with  the  (truly  innocuous)  vengeance  of 
calling  me  a  "Bohemian  Crank,"  and  I  have 
deeply  wounded  one  of  his  colleagues  whom 
I  esteemed  and  liked. 

Well,  such  is  Hfe. 


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